We are welcoming submission for the open session “post-global religion” for the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) conference “Religion – Continuations and Disruptions” from June 25 to June 29, 2019 in Tartu, Estonia. The deadline for individual papers is December 15, 2018.
OPEN SESSION (J. BORUP): Post-global Religion
Just like globalisation has been challenged by new political realities (walls, borders, boundaries, diversifications, enclavisations) in a post-global world, critical responses to globalisation also affects religious worlds. Reports from Pew Forum show more religious intolerance and less freedom of belief, and also religious voices applaud discourses of contraction. What could be termed ‘post-global religion’ is characterised by the strategic disruption of existing orders, and the articulation of a particularity re-enchantment. Just like post-colonial voices were critical responses to Western hegemony, post-global discourses and practices at both individual, institutional and national levels are critical reactions to globalisation, favouring the forces of centrifugal dispersion. This can be represented by anti-global religious re-nationalisation, re-ethnification, re-culturalisation, re-traditionalisation, re-racialisation, re-tribalism, re-territorialisation and re-configuration of the codes appropriating religious diversity. It can be seen in discourses and practices favouring monolithic cultural/national narratives, minority suppression, fractionalisation, downscaling of religious freedom. And it has increasingly been articulated in ‘culture wars’ with challenges of cultural appropriation and religionisation of political, cultural, ethnic or gender-related identity politics being turned into sacred authenticity claims.
This open session investigates disruptive responses to globalisation and articulations of strategic particularity in (the study of) religions. The session is explorative and invites scholars of religion to think with the term ‘post-global religion’ through both theoretical perspectives as well as empirical cases from around the world. Especially papers related to religious or cultural appropriation and identity politics (and their challenges to the study of religion) will be welcomed.
Deadline: 15th Dec 2018
Chair/contact: jb@cas.au.dk
For more information about the call for papers please see: https://easr2019.org/call-for-individual-papers/